The Skeleton Revealed An Illustrated Tour of the Vertebrates Steve Huskey he vertebrate skeleton is one of nature’s most amazing feats. Composed of cartilage and bone, it forms the supportive structure for the remaining aspects of our anatomy. Stripped of skin, we can see the body’s fascinating underlying architecture. In this one-of-a-kind book, biologist and skeletal reconstructionist Steve Huskey lays bare the vertebrate skeleton, providing a guided tour of the nuanced differences among the many featured vertebrate species. Using his own skeletal preparations, which the author has spent decades assembling, Huskey helps us understand why animals live the way they do. We see in the venomous snake the jaw and fang structures that allow it to both kill and consume its prey whole. The eastern mole is shown to be built like a weightlifter coupled with an earthmover, as Huskey discusses its habit of “swimming through soil.” The odd-looking trumpetfish is not built for music but for suction, with a skull that expands to vacuum in its prey. The pages of The Skeleton Revealed illuminate
Steve Huskey is an associate professor of biology at Western Kentucky University. Dr. Huskey’s skeletons are on 0display in many venues, including the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium.
not only the elegance of each skeleton, but also the natural history story the skeleton tells. Come along — let’s take a voyage through the boneyard.
“Steve Huskey feeds our fascination with the vast diversity of animals through beautiful photographs of skeletons he meticulously prepared. Accompanied by informative and up-to-date descriptions of the animals and their lives, this book reveals the remarkable evolutionary variety in animal body plans.” — George V. Lauder, Harvard University “In these pages, the vertebrate skeleton becomes an inspiration. Skeletons are sources of beauty, wonder, and knowledge about the natural world. Here, we see and learn about them in their full glory.” — Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
“I have admired Steve Huskey’s magnificent skeletal preparations for fifteen years. To now see them assembled in a book is a rare treat. It is the best book on the vertebrate skeleton I have encountered in along while.” — Adam Summers, Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington
Gorgeous high-contrast photographs reveal the eerie beauty of the vertebrate skeleton.
The ultimate biters, redeye piranhas, or Serrasalmus rhombeus, have some of the most vigorous jaws on the planet. In fact, recent research suggests that piranhas have one of the strongest bites of any animal that has ever lived (when adjusted for body size). Their stocky jaws, huge jaw muscles, biomechanical design, and extremely sharp teeth can tear through just about anything they can get their mouth over. Also called black piranhas, redeye piranhas are more solitary than many of their marauding cousins that swim in schools, somewhat resembling packs of wild dogs. Other species, such as red-bellied piranhas, Pygocentrus nattereri, often take bites out of the fins of their school-mates to curb their hunger between meals.
Luckily for them, they have some of the fastest tissue regeneration of any vertebrate; bites can disappear in just 48 hours. The solitary lifestyle of redeye piranhas is altered only during the breeding season and when some unfortunate prey attracts their attention in the water. Attacks on humans are extremely rare. In fact, most human bites are the result of human error, such as swimming downstream from a blood source or taking a piranha off a fishing hook. All piranhas do an important job of maintaining the health of other species by thinning out the weak, much like sharks do in the oceans. As such, they are a critical part of the Amazon rainforest.
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The largest of all the true cobras, the forest cobra, Naja melanoleuca, can grow up to 10 feet long. The species occurs in Central and Western Africa and typically inhabits lowland forests and moist savannas, with occasional sightings in drier habitats. The forest cobra is also a capable swimmer and will patrol water edges in search of unsuspecting prey. The prey forest cobras feed on is variable, depending on the habitat they spend the most time patrolling. Those in wet habitats will readily eat fish, while grassland forest cobras eat almost exclusively small mammals. They are also great climbers and will pursue other reptiles, such as lizards and snakes, into trees. Forest cobras are members of the family Elapidae. Like other elapids, they have fixed fangs, which means they do not swing on “hinges” like those of snakes such as vipers and rattlers. Since their fangs do not fold back
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when not in use, they must be much shorter than mobile-fanged snakes. A 9-foot forest cobra may only have one-quarter-inch fangs. However, those fangs deliver copious amounts of neurotoxic (destructive of nerve cells or nervous tissue) venom. A bite will yield drowsiness, paralysis, fever, and extremely low blood pressure and can be fatal due to neurological and respiratory failure if left untreated. The hood of a cobra is created by ribs that are modified to be much straighter than the rest. When threatened, the snake will rear up, flare its hood, and hiss as a warning to stay back. This species is considered very aggressive and will rush forward to strike if cornered. As such, they are often persecuted in their homeland, when the root of the problem is habitat loss and fragmentation by an ever-growing human population.
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© 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press UNCORRECTED PROOF Do not quote for publication until verified with finished book. All rights reserved. No portion of this may be reproduced or distributed without permission. NOT FOR SALE OR DISTRIBUTION
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Publication date: February, 2017 360 pages 8 x 10 189 b&w photos 978-1-4214-2148-3
$49.95 (s) £32.00 hc
Also available as an e-book
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